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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: insomnia

Soon?

15 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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December, dream, green life, growing, insomnia, life, long dark, Solstice, soon

The neighbor’s bathroom door slammed.
He’s a very good slammer.
My eyes opened and saw Christmas cactus silhouette
on the windowsill, echevarria’s sawtooth lump,
prayer plant’s leaves erect as they are not during the day.
It was a miracle I slept between then and then,
I dreamed, and hated the dream and
wanted to call you and tell you I’m sorry even though it was
just a dream about your fish in a tank, saltwater in fresh,
giant in small, and that you just didn’t seem to care.
I catalogued my pains and knew I would not sleep anymore.
Loud footsteps cross downstairs.
His microwave door thumps closed: breakfast of champions.
Nurse shadow passes my window, bundled.
It will be light soon? I asked swaying bare branches outside.
The laptop is so cold on my wrists; I turn on the heat
and hope it will satisfy the plants on the sill whose magenta faces
press desperately to the cold pane.
It must be light soon. It was dark at five, surely the sun will come soon?
Where is that cool cobalt that cancels coal dark,
sherbet palette on the way? Now? Is it now?
These are the long nights of winter in this hemisphere
5PM and the timers kick on the courtyard lights
6AM they’re still glowing
When the light finally comes I see crows flying west
as the dragonflies did in late spring, certain.
The crows of Middletown flew west late in the day,
I could tell the time by their flocking
as I sat near tall windows, chatting on the phone about nothing.
Cars dripping dew awaken, Navies on their way.
The sun’s trajectory short like patience.
My plants drink, hungry, and I use my indoor voice to say
“Good morning” and I rub their leaves gently.
I dread the night.

What Does This Button Do? (book review)

23 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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autobiography, band, Bruce Dickinson, cancer, childhood, children, creativity, fencing, heavy metal, insomnia, Iron Maiden, life, pilot, review, survival, wife

At the time Bruce Dickinson published his autobiography many things were going on in my life that kept it on the back burner. He is one of the heroes of my young-woman and heavy metal life, and I was shocked and prematurely mourned when he announced his cancer diagnosis. A new album was expected but I was still uninspired by the previous album he made when he was healthy. My life was upside-down and I had little patience for much of anything, particularly the band Iron Maiden where I felt their music and tours were, while high-octane, mostly the same.

During another recent bout with insomnia I said, “f*k it,” so I downloaded the book and thought I’d have a look. I page-turned it to the point where mid-morning when I woke I was pretty sure it really happened to me; it wasn’t a dream, I was actually there in his tiny village in their tiny rooms with no televisions and few cars and people were losing their men in the war and little boys fell in love with aircraft. (Perhaps I had my first and only Edgar Cayce moment? )

Perhaps a better place to begin is here: Bruce is an excellent story-teller. Everything happens quickly, goes down easy, and you can see it all. What spoke to me most was his formative years up to when he began performing onstage, then his solo band’s venture into Sarajevo at the height of the war and their orphanage visit. The chapters that described his induction to the music life that introduced him to the Iron Maiden life, the interim years of solo life, and returning to Iron Maiden life had few moments I didn’t already know because I’m a Maiden fan and any fan who didn’t know those moments aren’t worth their salt were okay, and would be more interesting to those of us who don’t already know their story. He goes on a great deal about fencing which tells me it had a lot more influence on his life than any of us knew. I thought it was a hobby he was devoted to and not much more, but no. Same for his desire to learn to fly. I learned that he must keep his mind active, not just focused but laser-focused and full of creating and completing a task so he can feel okay; comfortably sane.

I knew before I read the book that he chose not to include stories about girlfriends and wives. This doesn’t surprise me as he’s always kept family closely guarded. He dedicates a passage to wife and children at the front of the book but that is all. In the epilogue he says he chose not to bring them in because the book was big enough and they didn’t move the dialogue forward. And that, my friends, pissed me off. Finding and falling in love and having children and all the stories in between does not move the dialogue of You, Mr. Bruce Dickinson, forward? Throughout the process of reading this book I kept hoping he would throw out a little mention of a wife or kid moment but no. It was microphones, amps, cassettes, managers, trousers, fencing partners, movie treatments, commercial airline pilot training. Not a word for the woman who stood behind him all those years? This might be a shocking comment coming from one of the Maiden females who wanted him all to ourselves, but leaving out any goodness you had with Paddy and your children makes it less autobiography and more like another Iron Maiden tour. This was my only disappointment with his work.

The casual reader will consume the book quickly because he’s an excellent writer. Here’s hoping he will regale us with more tales from the skies or possibly the stage because he is unstoppable. Not sure I’ll buy another album or see another show, honestly but that’s not why I’m here. I will end with two quotes from the book that spoke to me: “Nothing in childhood is ever wasted,”  and “It didn’t matter what it was that you engaged in, as long as you respected its nature and attempted some measure of harmony with the universe.”  

No Angels Here, They’ve Passed On By.

13 Thursday Aug 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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age, bats, Far From Any Road, fear, insomnia, poem?, The Handsome Family

I put my gnawing back to bed at the start of the new day,
little pink clock ticking but it sounds so far away
Pearl moon watched high above my window,
uncaring witness to our struggles.
When my eyes finally closed and unconsciousness collected me
right around the witching hour
a small being crashed into my screen and clung there.
I woke and wondered at the odds of a bat finding my window.
My heart fluttered a little, dosed with the tiniest adrenaline
unlike the days when I was young and taut, full of fear
my heart would have battered my ribs,
but tonight I just didn’t seem to care.
Soon its tiny talons tried to find purchase on the air conditioner
scraping and slipping, and I hoped it couldn’t find its way in
and I wondered what I would do if it did
but I just didn’t seem to care that when a bat comes
crashing into your screen
that means a devil gets its wings.
Right about then an invisible cat ran across my bedroom
but I just didn’t seem to care.
I turned my back to stare at the floor hoping for sleep to return
caring less about what lurks past our windows
just a carcass twisted in sweaty sheets and a t-shirt
from the bar up the street that burned down.
“Far From Any Road” the bloodstained tune played on repeat in my head, back gnawing, moon a mute witness in the steaming parking lot.
I’d be grateful not to think or remember or dream.

December Fog

15 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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December, fog, foghorn, insomnia, ocean, sound, weather

I heard rain was coming this week.  I was so excited. I love rain when it comes here, particularly the pounding rain on the roof I can barely hear because the building is built well and my ears don’t hear so well, but there’s just this something that tells me it’s rain and I run outside 20 times a day to see it hurling down and dripping from long, green pine needles.   

I waited up stayed up wanting to hear the rain and all we got was less than what I wanted, a fuzzy drifting wet, tiny things you couldn’t even call drops, more like midges circling the lamp post jostling for the best mate, only a little damper.  That was no rain.  

But fog did come.  When I finally caved in to the tired I stripped and rolled in and watched the orange sky (the one that tells me we’ve got weather, otherwise the sky is mediocre blue) but heard no beating rain. The trees beyond the window didn’t gleam with wet, but the one significant sound was white fog and one calling horn.  The foghorns did not sound all day, it was more like off and on, and mostly the horns are loud from the back bay, not the ones in the channel who tag team “horn” and “horn,” the lowing that I love.  

I slept eventually and the sun rose and moved but you wouldn’t believe it because the sky was white, mother of pearl white, drifting from north, damp, feigning rain, cloaking the sun but the horn keeps calling from the back bay. 

I am in love.  But the persons who pilot ships would not speak so honorifically of the white gray mother of pearl steel fog I uplift here, watching drift. They have reason to care.

A year has begun

21 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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breathe, fear, insomnia, mother, son, Yoda

There was a moment in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke prepared to go inside a dark place.  He asks what’s in there, and Yoda tells him it’s whatever you bring.  I am 49, and I have discovered this truth over and over again.   Whatever we walk into, we’re already carrying with us.  Scoff at me for taking a life lesson from some fictional muppet, but it’s been helpful to me over the years.   The dark is only awful if I take awful in there with me.

My apartment is small and furnished only with what I need.  There isn’t a corner of my life that makes me feel afraid. I can sleep naked and walk to my sink for a sip of water in the dark because I know I’ll not trip over anything. I can open all my windows and scroll back all my shades because I don’t care who goes by. You will be anonymous players in the poems I write, the stories I build.  This is my home, a shell on a hermits back, where I am free and happy. I sleep alone in an apartment that is so silent all I can hear is the raining down bells of tinnitus and very little more.

Last night in the house I made, I could not sleep because I felt something else was here with me. I made a wonderful dinner for myself, then tucked into bed at an appropriate time. I read a few pages of an old fantasy novel, then turned out the little light. I slept on my side because when I sleep otherwise the heartburn dragon sets off the fire alarm. I watched a planet rise in my windowpane. I counted the leaves growing on my sill. I slept eventually, but then a loud noise. I awoke, heart pounding, adrenaline. My mind worked overtime to identify the sound. At first I thought it was someone throwing a rock at my window, but I knew that was silly. Then I thought about the back brush I bought and hung from a hook, and what the brush might sound like if it slipped from the holder, dropping into the tub.  Yes. All right.  Adrenaline dissipated and I went back to sleep only to be stalked by a nightmare: It wanted me to get out of bed and walk into the bathroom but I was terrified, I was unable to move, I couldn’t call for help, I was paralyzed, just turning over and tucking under the covers was a threat to the thing that held me captive, I felt like I weighed a million pounds.   After the adrenaline left me, I reminded myself that I am in charge of this life, this room, this darkness, and I stared out the window trying to breathe peace.  Then I slept.  But then a crow called, a really loud sound of a crow cawing, right here in my bedroom, and I know it happened, how could it not have, because it woke me. I woke to the sound of a crow cawing in my bedroom.  And my heart worked out again swimming in adrenaline.  I was frustrated and annoyed that something was in my room that wanted me to not sleep, so I got up and went to the kitchen for water, and no ill fell upon me.  I piled the covers back on me and felt my body build up its heat, a heat that’s only begun recently, I assume menopausal.   I asked the world to please let the light come so I could sleep in the light instead of fear.

I spent the night tossing and turning, back hurting, heartburning, wondering if the crow would come back and caw in my room, wondering at the shapes on the ceiling, the bathrobe on my bathroom door that’s been there for a hundred years but scares me now. The phone that went off at four in the morning.  Everything an adrenaline rush of fear, and not knowing.   I know a crow was in my bedroom and cawed.  I know the brush fell off its stem and hit the bathtub and scared me. I know that my fear is what I bring with me.   So today, I hope to regroup.  To reclaim my space here. That there is no reason to fear the rooms where I walk. I slept eventually.  I examine my insomniac fears.  The sun has risen and the day has given me new challenges.

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